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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (4727)	12/12/2000 9:21:40 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

When I was in the Navy I had a room mate who insisted that a word meant something that it didn't. I said, "Let's look it up." I opened the dictionary, his definition wasn't there. He pronounced, "I know what it means. I don't care what the dictionary says." I'd never met an intelligent person who didn't a) want to use a dictionary and b) accept it's meaning. I could understand if they wanted to consult another dictionary because words meanings change over time or they take on new meanings, but to arbitrarily reassign words new meanings only undermines the function of them. This hubris comes from people that haven't had the socialization experiences of education or, if they did, the lessons didn't stick. If we can't agree upon what words mean, then we have guaranteed that communication will be impossible. Cults and subcultures use this practice to ensure their separate existence. Drug, hippy, black and probably all subcultures do this to some extent. The greater the extent, the more marginalized the group.

To: Solon who wrote (4727)	12/12/2000 9:58:47 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

Thank you Solon , for describing Nirvanna , it is a beautiful word/concept is it not ? : the final beatitude that transcends suffering, karma, and illusions and is sought especially in Buddhism thru the discipline of desire * I substituted "illusions " for "samsara"....and what a monumental discovery it is , for man to finally see his entrapment in the inevitable sorrows inherent in the human condition. There is a price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms , as Aldous said: aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world entirely indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. Only just a brief time ago in geological time , did we drop out of the trees and invent speech. But in that not to distant past , we were and still remain extremely vulnerable to the internal instinctive behaviors from that animalistic existence ....that seeks dominance, greed & hoarding , posession, fear , recognition, jealously , violence, killing, revenge , avarice etc etc. Ever seen a tribe of Monkeys as they really are ? They can be so incredibly ferocious from the vantage of their trees, that even Tigers will give them a wide birth, avoiding a hail and rain of spears and jeering of hatred that comes down on him from above from the ones we used to be. There are certain pivot points in humanity's history, that comes in the form of relizations made clearer by the teachers that expounded the vision > What is the vision? I belive it entails that all that torures us from within and continues to resonate out of a not to distant past , where it was eat or be eaten, fight or flight .....and in case of any doubt , kill any which would encroche on your territory...or in competition to mate. What was the vision ? Just to see "us" for ourselves , from whence we came. And the greatest among us that chose to teach , were not just the Buddha or The Christ. ...but any who had that amazing awakening and perception that we should seek escape from all that enslaving internal incessant "Noise" that followed us here out of the primevil... One of the simplest and most immortal truths ever discovered , was when man reasoned finally within himself , that he could just study ,observe , cherish animals, things, and phenomena around him....even plant and grow them , but not have to feel compelled to kill . Primates are very dangerous killers if provoked or their territories are challenged...and "we" are the "they " that are still carried around inside us to the present. One of the most beautiful and profound realizations to come out of the mind of man. The turning point. That one great burden that Man carried around him from the beginning , that Joseph Cambell pointed out ....that our lives and very existence found us all drowning in a sea of slaughter to survive. Ahimsa-----i think/awaken ,therefore i do not kill. A concept , literally all mankind can be proud of . I dream , you dream , we all dream , for ice cream ...Nirvanna to you Solon! ;-) Mars * better than Ice Scream